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Evergreen State College: The Poster School for Academic Rot

When revolutions devour their own.

That inchoate but pervasive ideology known as “Political Correctness,” a dogma that is enshrined in and enforced nowhere to the extent that it is in academia, truly is toxic. It is a poison that all decent people concerned with the future of Western civilization should resist with every fiber of their being.

If the latest happenings at Evergreen State College aren’t enough to convince any and every person who isn’t a leftist fanatic of this, then nothing else can.

Even before UC Berkeley, Evergreen should be extolled as the poster school for academic corruption, a picture worth the proverbial thousand words as to all that’s gone wrong with Higher Education. In the latest events at Evergreen we have on display the radical subversion of academia’s historical mission as the premiere civilizing cultural institution, for at Evergreen, it is now savagery that rules.

As it turns out, every year for the last several years, Evergreen would hold its annual “Day of Absence.” On this occasion, non-white students and faculty would stay home while white students and faculty would attend “anti-racism” seminars and the like. This year, however, someone decided to reverse the agenda by encouraging non-whites to come to campus and coercing whites to stay home.

Biology professor Bret Weinstein, himself a white leftist, protested the new arrangement through an email that he sent to a Rashida Love, the college administrator who organized this year’s “Day of Absence:”

“There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles…and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.”

Weinstein continued:

“You may take this letter as a formal protest of this year’s structure, and you may assume I will be on campus on the Day of Absence. I would encourage others to put phenotype aside and reject this new formulation, whether they have ‘registered’ for it already or not. On a college campus, one’s right to speak—or to be—must never be based on skin color.”

Weinstein even offered to come to campus to hold a discussion on race and evolution.

None of this, however, went over very well with those black students who were determined to keep whites off of campus. The militants videoed themselves harassing Weinstein, who calmly pleaded with them to engage in “dialectic,” not “debate” with him. In a debate, he noted, each party is “trying to win.” Dialectic, in contrast, transpires when each party listens to the other with the intention of trying to “discover what is true.” “I am only interested in dialectic,” Weinstein said, “which does mean I listen to you, and you listen to me.”

Unsurprisingly, the students showed no interest in anything that the professor had to say. “We don’t care what terms you want to speak on,” one responded. “This is not about you. We are not speaking on terms—on terms of white privilege. This is not a discussion. You have lost that one.”

Weinstein is now a marked man. He is not permitted on campus for his own safety. He issued the following posts on Twitter:

“To be clear: the police told me I am not safe on campus. They can not protect me.”

He also added that it isn’t just his own safety for which he’s concerned, but that of those of his students who defend him. “My students are being singled out for disagreeing with the conventional wisdom. Witch hunt, 2017. @EvergreenStCol is silent on the matter.”

On May 24, Weinstein tweeted: [email protected] The press is MIA. College papering over the problem, putting students, staff + faculty at risk. Police have given me an unambiguous warning.”

Indeed, a student militant posted on social media that he has “names and faces of students in bret’s class who were filming the class protest yesterday and who are actively defending him [.]” The student encourages anyone who would like to see these faces “for your own safety” to contact him (or her).

President George Bridges and other administrators, far from coming to the aid of Professor Weinstein and his beleaguered students, commended the disruptors after having had what was described as “an intense and useful conversation” with them.

Unfortunately for the administration, video of this “conversation” has been leaked to the public. What was captured by it could be described in any number of terms, but “conversation” is not one of them. Much less can a “useful” conversation be said to have occurred. The College Fix shared these highlights from the encounter:

“F**K YOU, AND F**K THE POLICE!”

“Whiteness is the most violent f**kin’ system to ever breathe!”

“I’m tired of white people talking about what black and brown people need.”

“These white-ass faculty members need to be holding HIM [President Bridges?], and HIM, and ALL these people accountable!”

“F**K YOU [President] GEORGE [Bridges], we don’t wanna listen to a GODDAMN thing you have to say! No, you shut the fuck up!”

“I’m tellin’ you, you’re speakin’ to your ancestor, all right? We been here before you. We built these cities, we had civilization way before you ever had…comin’ out your caves.”

Weinstein was a guest on Tucker Carlson’s show recently. He said that for as chaotic as was the video footage of the administration’s encounter with the disruptors, the reality was even worse. He even likened it to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia that the Khmer Rouge, the communist forces, toppled in 1975.

Not a bad analogy. And just as no one would think to describe the thugs of the Khmer Rouge as “snowflakes,” so neither should any conservative dismiss the bullying thugs at Evergreen State along these lines. Obviously, Weinstein, who is no conservative, who is himself a man of the left, knows better than this.

Three other thoughts on Evergreen State College:

First, President George Bridges should be summarily fired for failing to provide for the safety of faculty and students. The thug students should be summarily expelled and, when fitting, arrested for their threats, intimidation, and racially-offensive remarks. Had it been whites making comparably derogatory comments about blacks or any other minority, there’s no question that they’d be charged with more than one “hate crime.” These black students must be made to suffer the same fate. They have, if not hatred toward whites, something even worse: contempt, an utter lack of respect.

Second, the taxpayers of Washington, alumni, and, importantly, the parents of Evergreen students who could have been harmed during this campus takeover must resoundingly, unequivocally, condemn what the administration permitted to fester. Pocketbooks and purses must close immediately. Federal funding to Evergreen must dry up until and unless administrators get their act together.

Finally, though Bret Weinstein deserves to be commended for the courage and integrity that he has demonstrated throughout this ordeal; and though the militants deserve contempt for their conduct, the truth is that the disruptors were, in a very real respect, simply responding to what they’ve learned at Evergreen State College. There is a strong likelihood that these young black kids never would have so much as heard of “white privilege,” much less have an inkling as to what it could mean, had it not been taught to them by faculty and administrators. Granted, they have been subconsciously imbibing it from the larger PC culture for much of their lives, but it has forcefully been driven home to them during their time at Evergreen.

Evergreen State College is now reaping what it has sowed. Don’t take my word for it. Eric Weinstein, brother of Bret, tweeted: “My brother…In the crosshairs of a lying mob. You SJWs just targeted the wrong guy. The left eats its own.”

“The left eats its own.” This is so true, but only so far as it goes.

The full truth is that the left, via its creed of Political Correctness, eats everything that is decent.